


Chained Heat

by randomcheeses



Series: What if? [15]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Crack, Humour, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-15
Updated: 2010-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomcheeses/pseuds/randomcheeses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Handcuffs + Desert + heatstroke suffering Mustang = Exasperated Ed</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chained Heat

This _sucks_ ,” the Fullmetal Alchemist declared as he trudged through the sand of the Eastern Desert. Beside him, his commanding officer rolled his eyes and tried not to sigh in exasperation.

“So you’ve said,” Mustang paused and did a mental count, “thirteen times. In the last hour. Quit whining.”

“Whining? _Whining?_ Colonel, we are handcuffed together, in the middle of the freaking desert, and those bastards took my arm! And your gloves,” the boy added as an afterthought.

“Your grasp of the obvious is positively dazzling, Fullmetal. Now quit whining. We haven’t lost anything that can’t be replaced easily enough.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ed grumbled, kicking at the sand moodily. “Winry’s going to kill me when she hears that I let someone take my arm. I’ll be ducking flying wrenches for months. She’s gonna try and knock my brains out!”

“You know, Fullmetal, you may not want to go around loudly declaring that your mechanic attacks you with a wrench. It could give people the wrong idea,” Mustang said delicately.

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Edward,” he sighed, “it always amazes me that you can display such utter brilliance when dealing with alchemy, and yet still be completely clueless when it comes to social niceties.”

“What. Are you. Talking about?” Ed growled, ignoring the backhanded compliment.

“Has it occurred to you, that if people overhear Ms. Rockbell’s best customer complaining about the possibility of grievous bodily harm, that they might decide to take their business elsewhere?”

Ed stared, mouth open for a moment, and then stammered “but- but that’s crap! It’s not like I’m _serious_. Winry knows that. It’s just a joke. Anyone who knows Winry knows that! She wouldn’t hurt anyone. Her customers wouldn’t believe it. They aren’t idiots!”

“Nevertheless, word of mouth has a way of travelling and potential customers who are not well acquainted with your mechanic may be inclined to believe rumours. Gossip is human nature after all.”

“That’s crap,” Ed repeated stubbornly. “Only paranoid bastards like you would believe something like that.”

“If you say so,” Mustang shrugged, causing the handcuffs to pull at Ed’s remaining wrist. “It’s just a thought.”

“Oh just- just shove it,” Ed snapped, though he privately decided that maybe he’d cut back a bit on the exaggerating from now on, since just maybe, possibly, just by some sort of cosmic fluke, Mustang might have a point.

~~~

They continued on in temporary silence, still heading for the distant blot on the horizon that was probably Liore, the last town in east Amestris before the land dissolved into the sandy mass of the Great Eastern Desert. As the day heated up and Ed’s automail leg started to get uncomfortably warm, he began to mentally curse the unknown assailants who were the cause of his and Mustang’s current predicament.

A few weeks earlier, Mustang had been temporarily reassigned to Liore to assist with the stabilisation after the end of a brief and destructive rebellion. Ed had been ordered to accompany him so that he could assist with the reconstruction of several ruined buildings, the military brass hoping that the news of the People’s Alchemist helping to rebuild the shattered town would go some way towards restoring the locals’ faith in the military.

For a while, it had seemed to work. There had been less unrest in the streets and people had gathered to watch Ed clap his hands and turn rubble back into houses and shops. They’d applauded enthusiastically, despite the fact that the buildings now bore the signs of the Fullmetal Alchemist’s idiosyncratic sense of style. A few onlookers had even approved of the addition of gargoyle faces to the architecture.

Then, yesterday evening, the Colonel, having gotten sick of waiting for Ed to report back to the temporary headquarters on time, had gone in search of the boy himself. He’d found Ed knee deep in sand, looking thoughtfully at a ruined cellar situated at the side of a busy street and begun to lecture him on the virtues of punctuality.

The sudden attack had caught both Ed and Mustang by surprise. Someone had thrown a rock, blood had spattered on the sandy street and within seconds there was an all-out riot. But the alchemists had not been accidental victims of circumstance. No, they had both been surprised been from behind with a cloth soaked in chloroform even as they attempted to stop the fighting.

They’d awoken to find themselves somewhere in the desert, handcuffed together, with both their well known methods of alchemy disabled. Mustang’s gloves had lain in shreds at his feet and Ed’s automail arm was nowhere to be seen. As a final mockery, two water canteens had been strewn next to them, their contents emptied onto the sand and evaporating fast.

Liore had been a tiny blot on the horizon, perhaps reachable by people who were well supplied. But given their lack of anything even resembling said supplies, it was obvious that whoever had abducted them had clearly intended the desert weather to cause death by exposure first.

 _And if we do die,_ Ed though miserably as they trudged onwards, _these damn handcuffs mean that we’re gonna end up in the same coffin! I’m gonna spend the rest of eternity less than a foot from Mustang! No, wait, Al. Al would definitely transmute us free before burying me. Unless he’s mad at me I guess. Of course, he’s not gonna be too happy at me getting myself killed before I managed to restore his real body. Augh! No, little brother! Don’t leave me attached to this bastard!_

Ed groaned. More than anything, more than water, more than food, he wanted his arm. With it, he could at least prevent a possible eternity stuck next to the person he hated, if not transmute water from the moisture in the air. _Hell, not even my arm. Just a solid piece of ground to sketch a stable circle on! Please?_

But unfortunately, simply drawing a circle to transmute himself free from Mustang was out of the question for the moment. The desert wind had repeatedly blown the roughly sketched circles apart before Ed had even finished them and the two circles which Ed _had_ managed to complete had been blown awry just as he was activating them.

The first rebound had deprived Ed of his eyebrows. He had not been too discouraged by this, but after the second rebound had explosively thrown both of them backwards and Ed’s metal knee had somehow ended up hitting his superior squarely in the groin, Mustang had forbidden any further attempts at alchemy.

Two hours ago, Ed had thought that the memory of the Colonel’s shocked expression and the pained little-girl squeal which had emerged from his mouth was worth halting any further attempts to separate them. Now though, with the sun heading towards the highest point of the horizon, and heat edging towards just this side of unbearable, he was tempted to knock the older alchemist out and try again anyway.

~~~

Abruptly, Mustang raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead and the handcuff pulled against Ed’s wrist again, dragging his arm up and scraping sharply across painfully dry skin and dragging him out of his thoughts. Ed winced and glared at Mustang. “Hey, watch it! That hurt, you jerk.”

“I do apologise,” Mustang said, and Ed couldn’t tell whether he was sincere, sarcastic, or both. “Though,” the older man added, “it’s hardly my fault that our arms aren’t on the same level.”

“Are you calling me short?!” Ed raged. “We’re going to die of thirst and starvation out here and you’re _still_ calling me a micro-sized pipsqueak, you bastard?!”

“I said nothing of the sort. But you do raise a good point. Given our current circumstances, it’s vital that we reserve as much energy as possible. I suggest you stop needlessly wasting your energy ranting about something I didn’t even say.”

Ed’s mouth worked soundlessly as he tried to come up with a rebuttal to this, but his heat-dazed brain failed him. He was forced to resort to snorting disparagingly and kicking sand in Mustang’s general direction.

“Jerk,” he snapped finally. “Since you _are_ so freakishly big, how come you’re not anywhere near as sweaty as I am?”

The colonel smiled and leaned down. “Perhaps I’m just more used to the heat?” he murmured in Ed’s ear, his voice somehow seeming much deeper than normal.

“Or maybe it’s finally baked your brain, you creepy bastard,” Ed spat, blushing in embarrassment as he shivered and jerked away, and glaring resentfully at the sand. _Stupid bastard. What’s he going and doing creepy things like that for?_ he thought. “ _No one who’s in a situation like this should have the right to look that good”._

“This is true,” Mustang said. “Still, I just have to accept the blessings that nature has bestowed upon me. You on the other hand. . .” he trailed off, looking at Ed and humming in consideration, “you would be more suited to colder weather. You would certainly stand out rather nicely when surrounded by snow.”

Ed stared up at his commanding officer in frozen shock, his blush returning in full force as he realised that he’d been so miserable and preoccupied with the unbearable heat that he’d accidentally said his last sentence out loud.

“ _I give up!”_ he howled internally. “ _Just kill me already_!”

“Well, I’m tempted,” Mustang agreed, and Ed realised with horror that he’d muttered his words aloud again. “The lack of incessant complaining would be nice. But dragging your corpse all the way to Liore just to have Alphonse murder me is rather a downside."

Ed groaned.


End file.
